(Untitled)

[atheneglaukopis]

I would like to say that I have been working like a crazy person lately, after two months of lazing around reading Akkadian, having something to do with wanting to get my dissertation in a super-advanced state, Donka's home situation notwithstanding, just in case the postdoc people ask. Also, as indicated in a previous post, having to do with

Comments

[malkhos]

This statemnt by Iriving Finkel,

"All the people who can read cuneiform can fit into this living room."

Here:

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/detail/continue-reading-but-for-the-grace-of-babylon

Seemed to me to be off by several orders of magnitude. While I was at Minnesota, for instance, there were 2 professors and and at least 1 student who were really fluent. Then you add in Chicago, Yale, Brown, Harvard, etc. it would have to be a pretty big living room. And there are no doubt more in Europe and probably a huge number in Israel.

If you read the article, he also seems to badly overestimate his originaility, although in general I've found much of his work useful (unless I am hopelessly confused between him and Finkelstein, which is possible).

[atheneglaukopis]

None of us are doing cuneiform. I am hopeless at writing systems and was nearly defeated by Devanagari. By which I mean, during the initial year of study during which Devanagari was mandatory, I never felt I mastered the grammar properly. At the beginning of the second year, I told Stephanie Jamison if I had to do any more Devanagari I didn't think I would be able to pass the Vedic qual, which is required for the PhD in Indo-European Studies, and I would transfer to Classics or something. Devanagari ended up being optional the second year and not tested on the qual, which I barely scraped through anyway.

I will be surprised if cuneiform ever proves to be within my reach.

We have an entire NELC department here, led by Bob Englund, which seems pretty hardcore. I would be surprised if all the grad students who've come through NELC at UCLA in recent years and can read cuneiform can fit into a living room.

Question: Is living room defined here to be with or without furniture? ;-)

[malkhos]

Well, I realize what your are talking about in the above post is very informal--but are you making a distinction between cuneiform and reading Akkadian in transliteration? I don't quite understand.

[atheneglaukopis]

Yes, I'm making a distinction between reading cuneiform, which is a writing system, and reading Akkadian, which is a language, in transliteration. I, and my reading group, can do the latter but not the former.

[malkhos]

I've seen those transliterated texts. But I fear a layman (and member I can't even read Hebrew) naturally thinks of the two together, nevertheless